The Palm Beach Post has a healthcare series called Aging in the Golden Years focused on navigating the financial and physical challenges to emerge as more people reach advanced age and, along with their children, confront a reality for which they will need help preparing. We want to hear what questions you have as you and your loved ones enter new territory. Email Post reporter Anne Geggis your questions at ageggis@usatodayco.com.
Move over Bad Bunny twerkers, the most unexpected part of the Super Bowl’s butt brigade might have been the advertisement using National Football League tight end players to promote finger-free prostate exams.
Some might call this focus on tight ends to promote a test that detects prostate cancer the most tortured use of a double entendre in Super Bowl advertisement history or the best way to convince men that going to the doctor is cool.
Either way, pharmaceutical giant Novaratis’ public service announcement for the prostate-specific antigen test (known as the PSA) puts the male reproductive gland in the spotlight in a wholly original way.
But is that specific prostate test the best method based on the recommendation of experts?
‘Relax your tight end’
Former Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians, tight end Rob Gronkowski and other NFL tight end players star in the one-minute ad, “Relax, It’s a Blood Test,” featuring them lounging in hammocks and drifting in water rafts or doing activities like yoga and painting as New Age music plays in the background.
“Have you ever, in your life, seen tight ends so relaxed?” Arians intones in a slow, decidedly non-football coach voice as the camera shows tight ends Tony Gonzalez, Colby Parkinson, Greg Olsen, Vernon Davis, Delanie Walker and George Kittle suited up for the game with their eyes closed.
Why are they relaxed? They don’t have to brace themselves for the cancer screening that involves a physician inserting his or her finger in a specific body cavity for the sake of preventing prostate cancer, which is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in men.
“Gronk, what did I teach you?” Arians asks.
“Relax your tight end,” Gronkowski says as a succession of three butts are shown going from tense to relaxed with a rustling noise.
Arguably it’s more subtle than another Super Bowl ad that stars William Shatner as “William Shat” bringing fiber to the masses hawking Raisin Bran with a load of poopy puns.
Prostate blood test not universally recommended
Still, the PSA for the PSA belies the controversy that the “finger free” blood test screening for prostate cancer has undergone.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — considered the gold standard in evaluating preventive screenings — gives a lower grade to the PSA test for its effectiveness in preventing death compared to its potential harm in contrast to other, well-known cancer screenings.
For men ages 55 to 69, the test gets a “C” because, although it may catch cases of prostate cancer in early stages, like Coach Arians says it did for him, the screening has also resulted in harm, the task force evaluation found. The lower grade is the result of the test’s rate of false-positive results, unnecessary biopsies and overdiagnosis and overtreatment that could lead to complications, including incontinence and erectile dysfunction.
That grade is decidedly lower than other common screenings the task force has evaluated.
A cervical cancer screening for women, aged 21 to 65 years, that scoops up cervical cells for analysis every three years, gets an “A” rating from the task force as does a colonoscopy for adults, aged 50 to 75 years.
The American Urological Association stopped recommending the PSA for men younger than 55 who are at “average risk” for the cancer in 2013. Ten years later, however, the association refined their recommendations, saying that the test should be offered to men between the ages of 50 and 69 years every two to four years.
It might come as a relief to tight ends that the “digital rectal exam” got a “C” from the urology association, in its latest update.
A Florida urologist speaks
Dr. Lawrence Yore, president of the Tampa General Hospital Urology Group of Florida, said he thinks that his patients should be getting both kinds of tests.
“I am old school — I think doing a rectal exam is helpful,” said Yore, whose group has offices in Delray Beach, Lake Worth Beach and Palm Beach Gardens. “And it only takes a minute.”
Yore said he won’t insist on it, though.
As for the task force’s grade for the PSA, particularly the “D” it gives to the PSA test for men older than 70 years, Yore points out that following the guidelines didn’t serve President Joe Biden, 83, well.
The test gets a lower grade from the task force for Biden’s age group because of how age can affect the test results for reasons other than cancer. Also, it often doesn’t effectively distinguish between the aggressive kind of prostate cancer that kills and the slow-moving kind that doesn’t, the thinking has been.
“They had not done a repeated PSA (on Biden) and then, when he was 82 … they did a biopsy and he has metastatic prostate cancer that’s gone to the bone, which is a bad thing,” Yore said.
Yore watched the advertisement and appreciated that it’s raising awareness.
“We want to find that aggressive prostate cancer that’s going to kill a man,” Yore said. “About 30,000 men a year have died from it, which is similar to the amount of women who die of breast cancer.”
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Anne Geggis is statewide reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA, reporting on health and senior issues. If you have news tips, please send them to ageggis@usatodayco.com. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY, at https://palmbeachpost.com/newsletters
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: ‘Tight end’ Super Bowl prostate test commercial gets laughs, but what do experts say?
Reporting by Anne Geggis, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
